Looking back at New Labour

I'm writing this just three days before our next General Election here in the UK - in which , despite widespread popular mistrust of the Conservative leader David Cameron and the recent surge in support for the Liberal Democrats, New Labour is expected to lose power after thirteen years. The upcoming election was not the reason I chose to pick up Andrew Rawnsley's "Servants of the People: The Inside Story of New Labour" during a few days off and a recent trip to London. Nevertheless, this look back at the halcyon days of Labour's first term proved to be an excellent choice, dredging up a lot of forgotten memories from the time when I first became interested in politics and rekindling my interest in local UK politics just when I needed it most.

The General Election of 1 May 1997, in which Tony Blair swept into 10 Downing Street at the head of a landslide victory for Labour - is the first election I have any memory of at all. (In fact, despite being only 11 at the time, I even got a chance to participate after a fashion. Our school held a "mock election", in which sixth formers signed up to be "candidates" for the major parties and presented their case during assembly. Everyone in the school then "voted" during break time on polling day. Although I voted Green - presumably because I wanted to be different from everybody else - our school bucked the national trend with a crushing defeat of Labour by the Tories, presumably because most girls voted for whoever Daddy supported). In spite of this early experience of the thrill of democracy, it wasn't until a couple of years later that I really started to get interested in politics, and my early memories of that burgeoning interest are intimately bound up with the personalities and events of Labour's first term. While the big names of the pre-1997 era (Michael Heseltine, Roy Hattersley, Neil Kinnock) seem to me like figures from some long-distant past, the cast of Rawnsley's book (Robin Cook, Clare Short, Mo Mowlam, Peter Mandelson, even the hapless Ron Davies with his embarrassing nocturnal safari on Clapham Common) are very familiar indeed. These were the individuals who - in all their power-hungry, feuding, voter-punching, badger-spotting glory - got me interested in politics in the first place, and "Servants of the People" provided both a nostalgia trip and a much-needed fleshing out of many of the incidents and scandals of which I had gained only a very sketchy (and no doubt tabloid-influenced) idea at the time.

As a behind-the-scenes account of the early years of the New Labour government, then, Rawnsley's book looks unlikely to be surpassed - although an electoral implosion on Thursday could give birth to a few explosive autobiographies (by the likes of Brown and Mandelson) which might provide fodder for an expanded edition. As a guide to the current state of the party, it is rather more limited. For one thing, most of the events it describes happened a decade or more ago. Many of Rawnsley's protagonists have either faded into the political background (Clare Short, John Prescott, David Blunkett - even, at least in theory, Tony Blair himself) or, in the case of Robin Cook and Mo Mowlam, departed this life altogether. Of the major players, so far as I can recall only Brown, Mandelson and Jack Straw are still prominent members of the Government - although I will confess I did experience a minor thrill whenever I came across a prominent member of the present Cabinet (David Miliband, Harriet Harman, Ed Balls) in an earlier incarnation as a policy planner or lowly aide.

Moreover, I don't think that Rawnsley's focus on the bitter intra-party feuds during Labour's first term (notably the infamous division between Blairites and Brownites), relevant though it is to a study of that period, is particularly helpful when it comes to understanding the problems afflicting the party today. I see these as stemming from a combination of factors including a massive loss of credibility after Iraq, the economic crisis, Brown's personal shortcomings as a leader, and (in my opinion very significantly) the malaise that inevitably afflicts any government that has been in power for thirteen years. In order to get some perspective on the current state of the Labour Party, I will need to pick up Rawnsley's more recent book, "The End of the Party", just as soon as a library near me thinks to obtain a copy.

The book is, however, well worth reading for two main reasons. First of all, New Labour's rise to power changed the British political landscape, just as Thatcherism had done during the 1980s. If you don't believe me, take a look at the current leaders of the Liberal Democrats (Nick Clegg) and the Conservatives (David Cameron). Both men, particularly Cameron, have adopted a public persona that owes a lot to Tony Blair. Secondly, "Servants of the People" really is a goldmine of useful - and often hilarious - anecdotes. Ron Davies' nocturnal mishap on Clapham Common is here, of course, as are other New Labour "classics" such as Euan Blair's drunken post-GCSE revels and John Prescott's infamous left hook on the campaign trail. My favourite, however, was the reminder of a gloriously awful conference speech by the grand old lady of the Conservative Party, Baroness Thatcher herself. Brits who were above the minimum age of political awareness in 2001 will no doubt remember her "Mummy Returns" speech. As Rawnsley puts it, "the former Conservative Prime Minister surely had no idea that she was comparing herself to the disinterred monster of a horror movie." And on that note, I'm off to search for the clip on YouTube.